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ADDRESS 



IN COMMEMORATION OF 



THK INAUaURATION 



GEORGE WASHINGTON 



First President of the United States 

DELIVERED BEFORE THE 

TWO HOUSES OF CONGRESS 
December ii, 1889 



MELVILLE WESTON FULLER, LL.D. 

Chief-Justice of the United States 



WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 
1890 



OCT '^ 1908 
0. or D. 






PREFACE. 



By the sundry civil appropriation bill of March 2, 1889, it was 
enacted as follows: 

"Sec. 4. That in order that the centennial anniversary of the inauguration of 
the first President of the United States, George Washington, may be duly com- 
memorated, Tuesday, the thirtieth day of April, anno Domini eighteen hundred 
and eighty-nine, is hereby declared to be a national holiday throughout the United 
States. And in further commemoration of this historic event, the two houses of 
Congress shall assemble in the Hall of the House of Representatives on the second 
Wednesday of December, anno Domini eighteen hundred and eighty-nine, when 
suitable ceremonies shall be had under the direction of a joint committee composed 
of five Senators and five Representatives, members of the Fifty-first Congress, who 
shall be appointed by the presiding officers of the respective houses. And said 
joint committee shall have power to sit during the recess of Congress; and it shall 
be its duty to make arrangements for the celebration in the Hall of the House of 
Representatives on the second Wednesday of December next, and may invite to 
be present thereat such officers of the United States and of the respective States 
of the Union, and (through the Secretary of State) representatives of foreign Gov- 
ernments. The committee shall invite the Chief-Justice of the United States to 
deliver a suitable address on the occasion. And for the purpose of defraying the 
expenses of said joint committee and of carrying out the arrangements which it 
may make, three thousand dollars, or so much thereof as may be necessary." 25 
Stat., 9S0, c. 41 1, I 4. 

This joint committee, as organized, consisted of Mr. Hiscock of 
New York, Mr. Sherman of Ohio, Mr. Hoar of Massachusetts, Mr. 
VooRHEES of Indiana, and Mr. Eustis of Louisiana, on the part of 
the Senate; and of Mr. BAVNEof Pennsylvania, Mr. Hitt of Illinois, 
Mr. Carter of Montana, Mr. Culberson of Texas, and Mr. Cum- 
MINGS of New York, on the part of the House of Representatives. 

It agreed upon and issued the following as the order of arrange- 
ments at the Capitol: 

The Capitol will be closed on the morning of the i Ith to all except the members 
and officers of Congress. Invited guests will be admitted by tickets. 

At 1 1 o'clock the east door leading to the Rotunda will be opened to those hold- 
ing tickets of admission to the floor of the House and its galleries. 

3 



4 Preface. 

The floor of the House of Representatives will be opened for the admission of 
Senators and Representatives, and to those having tickets of admission thereto, 
who will be conducted to the seats assigned to them. 

The President and ex-Presidents of the United States will be seated in front 
and on the right of the Presiding Officer. 

The Justices of the Supreme Court will occupy seats ne.\t to the President, in 
front and on the right of the Presiding Officer. 

The Cabinet Officers, the Hon. George Bancroft, the General of the Army (re- 
tired), the Admiral of the Navy, the Major-General commanding the Army, and 
the officers of the Army and Navy who, by name, have received the thanks of 
Congress, will occupy seats directly in rear of the President and Supreme Court. 

The Chief- Justice and Judges of the Court of Claims and the Chief- Justice and 
Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia will occupy 
seats directly in rear of the Cabinet. 

The Diplomatic Corps will occupy seats in front and on the left of the Presiding 
Officer. 

International American Congress and Marine Conference will occupy seats in 
rear of the Diplomatic Corps. Cards of admission will be delivered to the Secre- 
tary of State. 

Ex- Vice-Presidents and Senators will occupy seats in rear of the Judiciary. 

Representatives will occupy seats behind the Senators and representatives of 
foreign Governments. 

Commissioners of the District, Governors of States and Territories, and guests 
invited to the floor, will occupy seats behind the Representatives. 

The Executive Gallery will be reserved exclusively for the families of the Su- 
preme Court, the families of the Cabinet, and the invited guests of the President. 

The Diplomatic Gallery will be reserved exclusively for the families of the 
members of the Diplomatic Corps. Cards of admission will be delivered to the 
Secretary of State. 

The Reporters' Gallery will be reserved exclusively for the use of the reporters 
of the press. Tickets thereto will be delivered to the Press Committee. 

The Official Reporters of the Senate and of the House will occupy the Reporters' 
desk, in front of the Clerk's table. 

The Marine Band will occupy the south corridor in rear of the Presiding Officer. 

The Diplomatic Corps, International American Congress, and Marine Confer- 
ence and other foreign guests will assemble in the Marble Room of the Senate; 
the Judiciary at the Supreme Court Room; the President, ex-Presidents, the Cab- 
inet, and the ex-Vice- Presidents will meet at the President's Room at 12.30 p. m. 

The House being in session, and notification to that effect having been given to 
the Senate, the Vice-President and the Senate in a body, preceded by the Presi- 
dent, ex-Presidents, ex-Vice-Presidents, the Cabinet, the Judiciary, the Diplomatic 
Corps, International American Congress, and Marine Conference will proceed to 
the Hall of the House of Representatives. 

The Vice-President will occupy tlie Speaker's chair, and will preside. 

The Speaker of the House will occupy a seat at the left of the Vice-President. 



Preface. 5' 

The other officers of the Senate and of the House will occupy seats on the floor 
at the right and the left of the Presiding Officer. 

The Architect of the Capitol, the Sergeant-at-Arms of the Senate, the Sergeant- 
at-Arms and the Doorkeeper of the House are charged with the execution of 
these arrangements. 

Accordingly, on the nth of December, at i o'clock p. m., the 
President of the United States, with the members of his Cabinet and 
the Chief-Justice and Associate Justices of the Supreme Court, entered 
the Hall of the House of Representatives and occupied the seats 
reserved for them in front and on the right of the Presiding Officer. 

Next the members of the Senate, following the Vice-President and 
and their Secretary, preceded by their Sergeant-at-Arms, entered the 
Hall and took the seats reserved for them on the right and left of the 
main aisle. 

The Vice-President occupied the Speaker's chair, the Speaker of 
the House sitting at his left. 

The Major-General commanding the Army, the Diplomatic Corps, 
the International American Congress, and Marine Conference, and 
the other persons designated in the order of exercises, were seated in 
accordance with the arrangements of the joint committee. 

The Vice-President announced the object of the meeting, and, after 
prayer by the Chaplain of the Senate, said "an oration will now be 
delivered by Melville W. Fuller, Chief-Justice of the United States." 

At the close of the address a benediction was said by the Chaplain 
of the House of Representatives, Tne President of the United States, 
with the members of his Cabinet, the Supreme Court, the Senate, and 
the invited guests then retired from the Hall, while the Marine Band 
played " Washington's Grand March. " 



ADDRESS. 



Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, and gentlemen of the Senate 
and House of Representatives: By the terms of that section 
of the act of Congress under which we have assembled in 
further commemoration of the historic event of the inaugu- 
ration of the first President of the United States, George 
Washington, the 30th of April, A. D. 1889, was declared a 
national holiday, and in the noble city where that event 
took place its centennial anniversary has been celebrated 
with a magnificence of speech and song, of multitudinous 
assembly, and of naval, military, and civic display, accom- 
panied by every manifestation of deep love of country, of 
profound devotion to its institutions, and of intense appre- 
ciation of the virtues and services of that illustrious man 
whose assumption of the Chief Magistracy gave the assur- 
ance of the successful setting in motion of the new Govern- 
ment. 

Nothing on the occasion of that celebration could be more 
full of encouragement and hope than the testimony so over- 
whelmingly given that Washington still remained first in 
the hearts of his countrymen, and that the example afforded 
by his career was still cherished as furnishing that guide of 
public conduct which had kept and would keep the nation 
upon the path of glory for itself and of happiness for its 
people. 

The majestic story of that life — whether told in the pages 
of Marshall or Sparks, of Irving or Bancroft, or through 
the eloquent utterances of Ames or Webster, or Everett or 
Winthrop, or the matchless poetry of lyowell, or the verse of 
Byron — never grows old. 

7 



8 Address of Chief justice Fuller. 

We love to hear again what the great Frederick and Na- 
poleon, what Erskine and Fox and Brongham and Talley- 
rand and Fontanes and Guizot said of him, and how crape 
enshrouded the standards of France, and the flags upon the 
victorious ships of England fell fluttering to half-mast at the 
tidings of his death. 

The passage of the century has not in the slightest degree 
impaired the irresistible charm ; and whateyer doubts or 
fears assail us in the turmoil of our impetuous national life, 
that story comes to console and to strengthen, like the 
shadow of a great rock in a weary land. 

Washington had become first in war, not so much by 
reason of victories over the enemy, though he had won such, 
or of success in strategy, though that had been his, as of 
the triumphs of a constancy which no reverse, no hardship, 
no incompetency, no treachery could shake or overcome. 

And because the people comprehended the greatness of 
their leader and recognized in him an entire absence of per- 
sonal ambition, an absolute obedience to convictions of 
duty, an unaffected love of country, of themselves, and of 
mankind, he had become first in the hearts of his country- 
men. 

Because thus first, he was to become first in peace, by 
bringing to the charge of the practical working of the sys- 
tem he had participated in creating, on behalf of the people 
whose independence he had achieved, the same serene judg- 
ment, the same sagacity, the same patience, the same sense 
of duty, the same far-sighted comprehension of the end to be 
attained that had marked his career from its beginning. 

From the time he assumed command he had given up all 
idea of accommodation, and believed that there was no mid- 
dle ground between subjugation and complete independence, 
and that independence the independence of a nation. 

He had demanded national action in respect of the Army; 
he had urged, but a few weeks after Bunker Hill, the crea- 
tion of a Federal court with jurisdiction co-extensive with 



Address of Chief yustice Fuller. 9 

the colonies; he had during the war repeatedly pressed home 
his deep conviction of the indispensability of a strong cen- 
tral government, and particularly at its close, in his circu- 
lar to the governors of the States and his farewell to his 
comrades. He had advocated the promotion of commercial 
intercourse with the rising world of the West, so that its 
people might be bound to those of the sea-board by a chain 
that could never be broken. Appreciating the vital impor- 
tance of territorial influences to the political life of a com- 
monwealth, he had approved the cessions by the landed 
States, none more significant than that by his own, and had 
made the profound suggestion — which was acted on — of a 
line of conduct proper to be observed for the government of 
the citizens of America in their settlement of the Western 
country, which involved the assertion of the sovereign right 
of eniinent domain. He had advised the commissioners of 
Virginia and Maryland, in consultation at Mount Vernon in 
relation to the navigation of the Potomac, to recommend a 
uniform currency and a uniform system of commercial reg- 
ulations, and this led to the calling of the conference of 
commissioners of the thirteen States. At the proper mo- 
ment he had thrown his immense personal influence in favor 
of the convention and secured the ratification cA the Consti- 
tution. 

It remained for him to crown his labors by demonstrating 
in their administration the value of the institutions whose 
establishment had been so long the object of his desire. 

"It is already beyond doubt,!' wrote Count Moustier, in 
June, 1789, "that in spite of the asserted beauty of the plan 
which has been adopted, it would have been necessary to 
renounce its introduction if the same man who presided over 
its formation had not been placed at the head of the enter- 
prise. The extreme confidence in his patriotism, his integ- 
rity, and his intelligence forms to-day its principal support." 

There were obvious difficulties surrounding the first Pres- 
ident. Eleven States had ratified, but the assent of some 



lo Address of Cliief ynsficc Fuller. 

had been secured only after strenuous exertion, considerable 
delay, and upon close votes. 

So slowly did the new Government get under way that 
the first Wednesday of IMarch, the day designated for the 
Senate and House to assemble, came and went, and it was 
not until the ist of April that the House obtained a quorum, 
and not until the 6th that the electoral vote was counted in 
joint convention. 

An opposition so intense and bitter as that which had ex- 
isted to the adoption of the Constitution could not readily 
die out, and the antagonisms which lay at its base were as 
old as human nature. 

Jealousies existed between the smaller and the larger, be- 
tween the agricultural and the commercial, States, and these 
were rendered the keener by the rivalries of personal ambi- 
tion. 

Those who admired the theories of the French philosoph- 
ical school and those who preferred the British model could 
not readily harmonize their differences, while the enthusi- 
astic believers in the capacity of man for self-government 
denounced the more conservative for doubting the extent of 
the reliance which could be placed upon it. 

The fear of arbitrary power took particular form in ref- 
erence to the presidential office, which had been fashioned 
in view of the personal government of George the Third, 
rather than on the type of monarchy of the English system 
as it was in principle, and as it is in fact. 

And this fear was indulged notwithstanding the frequency 
of elections, since no restriction as to re-eligibility was im- 
posed upon the incumbent. 

But no fear, no jealousy, could be entertained of him who 
had indignantly repelled the suggestion of the bestowal of 
kingly power; who had unsheathed the sword with reluc- 
tance and laid it down with joy; who had never sought 
official position, but accepted public office as a public trust, 
in deference to so unanimous a demand for his services as 



Address of Chief j/^usike Fuller. 1 1 

to convince him of their necessity; whose patriotism em- 
braced the whole country, the future grandeur of which his 
prescience foresaw. 

Nevertheless, while there could be no personal opposition 
to the unanimous choice of the people, and while his availa- 
bility at the crisis was one of those providential blessings 
which, in other instances, he had so often insisted had been 
bestowed upon the nation, the fact remained that the situa- 
tion was full of trial and danger, and demanded the appli- 
cation of the highest order of statesmanship. 

Nor are we left to conjecture Washington's feelings in 
this regard. 

Indeed, it maybe said that at every period of his public life, 
though he possessed the talent for silence and did his work 
generally with closed lips, it is always possible to gather 
from his remarkable letters the line of his thought upon 
current affairs, and his inmost hopes, fears, and aspirations 
as to the public weal. 

Take for illustration that in which, on the gth of January, 
1790, little more than eight months after his inauguration, 
he says: 

The establishment of our new Government seemed to be the last 
great expenment for promoting human happiness by a reasonable 
compact in civil society. It was to be, in the first instance, in a con- 
siderable degree a government of accommodation as well as a gov- 
ernment of laws. Much was to be done by prudence, much by 
conciliation, much by firmness. Few, who are not philosophical 
spectators, can realize the difficult and delicate part which a man in 
my situation had to act. All see and most admire the glare which 
hovers round the external happiness of elevated office. To me there 
is nothmg in it beyond the luster which may be reflected from its 
connection with a power of promoting human felicity. In our prog- 
ress towards political happiness my station is new, and, if I may use 
the expression, I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely an 
action the motive of which may not be subject to a double interpre- 
tation. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not 
hereafter be drawn into precedent. If, after all my honorable and 



12 Address of Chief 'jfustice Fuller, 

faithful endeavors to advance the felicity of my country and man- 
kind, I may indulge a hope that my labors have not been altogether 
without success, it will be the only compensation I can receive in the 
closing scenes of life. 

Here he admits with a certain suppressed sadness that he 
realizes that private life has ceased to exist for him, and that 
from his previous participation in public affairs, the exalted 
character of the new office, and the fact that he is the first to 
fill it, his every act and word thereafter may be referred to 
in guidance or control of others, and as bearing upon the 
nature of the Government of which he was the head. It is 
borne in upon him that in this instance, in a greater degree 
than ever before, his conduct is to become an historical ex- 
ample. Questions of etiquette, questions pertaining to his 
daily life, unimportant in themselves, cease to be so under 
the new conditions, and this interruption of the domestic 
tenor of his way, to which he was of choice and ardently 
attached, finds no compensation in the gratification of a 
morbid hunger and thirst for applause, whether of the few 
or of the many. 

But in the consciousness of having contributed to the 
advancement of the felicity -of his country and of mankind 
lies the true reward for these reniewed labors. 

The promotion of human happiness was the key-note of 
the century within which Washington's life was comprised. 

It was the century of Franklin and Turgot; of IVIontes- 
quieu and Voltaire and Rosseau; of Frederic!^ the Great and 
Joseph the Second; of Pitt and Fox and Burke and Grattan; 
of Burns and Cowper and Gray; of Goethe and Kant; of 
Priestly and Hume and Adam Smith; of Wesley and White- 
field and Howard, as well as of the long line of statesmen 
and soldiers, and voyagers over every sea ; of poets and art- 
ists and essayists and encyclopaedists and romancers, which 
adorned it. 

It was the century of men like Condorcet, who, outlawed 
and condemned by a revolutionary tribunal, the outcome of 



Address of Chief 'justice Fuller. 13 

popular excesses, calmly sat down, in hiding, to compose 
his work upon the progress of the human mind. 

It was a century instinct with the recognition of the hu- 
man soul in every human being, and alive with aspirations 
for universal brotherhood. 

With this general longing for the elevation of mankind 
Washington sympathized, and in expressing a hearty desire 
for the rooting out of slavery considered it not only essen- 
tial to the perpetuation of the Union, but desirable on the 
score of human dignity. Nevertheless, with the calm rea- 
son in reference to government of the race from which he 
sprang, he regarded the promotion of human happiness as 
to be best secured by a reasonable compact in civil society, 
and that established by the Federal Constitution as the last 
great experiment to that end. 

Washington and his colleagues were familiar with prior 
forms of government and their operation, and with the 
speculations of the writers upon that subject. They were 
conversant with the course of the Revolution of 1688, the 
then triumph of public opinion, and the literature of that 
period. They accepted the thesis of Locke that, as the true 
end of government is the mutual preserv^ation of the lives, 
liberties, and estates of the people, a government which in- 
vades these rights is guilty of a breach of trust, and can 
lawfully be set aside ; and they were persuaded of the sound- 
ness of the views of Montesquieu, that the distribution of 
powers is necessary to political liberty, which can only exist 
when power is not abused, and in order that power may not 
be abused it must be so distributed that power shall check 
power. 

It is only necessary to consult the pages of the Feder- 
alist — that incomparable work on the principles of free 
government — to understand the acquaintance of American 
statesmen with preceding governmental systems, ancient 
and modern, and to comprehend that the Constitution was 
the result, not of a desire for novelty, but of the effort to 



14 Address of Chief y^usfke Fuller. 

gather the fruit of that growth which, having its roots in 
the past, could yield in the present and give promise for the 
future. 

The colonists possessed practically a common nationality, 
and took by inheritance certain fundamental ideas upon the 
development of which their growth had proceeded. Self- 
government by local subdivisions, a legislative body of two 
houses, an executive head, a distinctive judiciary, consti- 
tuted the governmental methods. 

Magna Charta, the Petition and Declaration of Rights, the 
habeas corpus act, the act of settlement, all the muniments 
of English liberty, were theirs, and the New England Con- 
federation of 1643, ^^^ schemes of union of 1754 and 1765, 
the revolutionary Congress, the Articles of Confederation, 
the colonial charters and constitutions, furnished a vast 
treasury of experience upon which they drew. 

Their work in relation to what had gone before was in 
truth but in maintenance of that continuity of which Hooker 
speaks : "We were then alive in our predecessors and they 
in their successors do live still." They did not seek to 
build upon the ruins of older institutions, but to develop 
from them a nobler, broader, and more lasting structure, and 
in effecting this upon so vast a scale and under conditions 
so widely different from the past, the immortal instrument 
was indeed the product of consummate statesmanship. 

Of the future greatness of the new nation Washington had 
no doubt. He saw, as if face to face, that continental do- 
main which glimmered to others as through a glass darkly. 

The great West was no sealed book to him, and no one 
knew better than he that no foreign power could long con- 
trol the flow of the Father of Waters to the Gulf 

He is said to have lacked imagination, and if the exhila- 
ration of the poet, the mystic, or the seer is meant, this may 
be true. 

His mind was not given to indulgence in dreams of ideal 
commonwealths like the republic of Plato or of Cicero, the 
City of God of Augustine, or the Utopia of Sir Thomas 



Address of Chief yustice Fuller. 15 

More, but it grasped the mighty fact of the empire of the 
future, and acted in obedience to the heavenly vision. 

But the question was, could that empire be realized and 
controlled by the people within its vast boundaries in the 
exercise of self-government? 

Could the conception of a central government, operating 
directly upon citizens who at the same time were subject to 
the jurisdiction of their several States, be carried into prac- 
tical working operation so as to reconcile imperial sway 
with local independence? 

Would a scheme work which was partly national and 
partly federal, and which aimed at unity as well as union? 

And could the rule of the majority be subjected with 
binding force to such restraints through a system by repre- 
sentation, that of a republic rather than that of a pure de- 
mocracy, that the violence of faction could not operate in 
the long run to defeat a common government by the many 
throughout so immense an area? 

Could the restraints essential to the preservation of society, 
the equilibrium between progress and order, be so guarded 
as to allow of that sober second thought which would secure 
their observance, and thus the liberty and happiness of the 
people and the enduring progress of humanity? 

While the general genius of the Government was thor- 
oughly permeated with the ideas of freedom in obedience, 
yet time was needed to commend the form in which it was 
for the future to exert itself 

Hence administration in the first instance required accom- 
modation as well as adherence to the letter, and prudence 
and conciliation as well as firmness. 

The Cabinet of the first President illustrates his sense of 
the nature of the exigency. 

All its members were friends and supporters of the Con- 
stitution, but possessed of widely different views as to the 
scope of its powers and the probabilities of its successful 
operation in the shape it then bore. 



1 6 Address of Chief yustkc Fuller. 

Between Jefferson and Hamilton there seemed to be a 
great gulf fixed, yet a common patriotism bridged it, and a 
common purpose enabled them for these critical years to act 
together. And this was rendered possible by the fact that 
the leadership of Washington afforded a common ground 
upon which every lover of a united country could stand. 
And as the first four years were nearing their close, Hamil- 
ton and Jefferson severally urged Washington to consent to 
remain at the helm for four years longer, that the Govern- 
ment might acquire additional firmness and strength before 
being subjected to the strain of the contention of parties. 

Undoubtedly Hamilton desired this also because of nearer 
coincidence of thought on some questions involving serious 
difference of opinion, but both concurred in urging it upon 
the ground that the confidence of the whole Union was cen- 
tered in Washington, and his being at the helm would be 
more than an answer to every argument which could be 
used to alarm and lead the people in any quarter into vio- 
lence or secession. 

Appointments to the Supreme Bench involved less reason 
for accommodation, but equal prudence and sagacity. 

The great part which that tribunal was to play in the 
development of our institutions was yet to come, but the 
importance of that branch of the Government to which was 
committed the ultimate interpretation of the Constitution 
was appreciated by Washington, who characterized it as the 
keystone of the political fabric. 

To the headship of the court Washington called the pure 
and great-minded Jay, of New York, and associated witlihim 
John Rutledge, of South Carolina, who, from the stamp-act 
Congress of 1765, had borne a conspicuous part in the his- 
tory of the country and of his State; James Wilson, of 
Pennsylvania, who, like Rutledge, had been prominent in 
the Continental Congress and in the Federal Convention, a 
signer of the Declaration of Independence, and one of the 
most forcible, acute, and learned debaters on behalf of the 



Address of Chief yustice Fiiller. 17 

Constitution, as the records of the Federal and his State 
conventions show ; dishing, chief-justice of Massachusetts, 
experienced in judicial station, and the only person holding 
office under the Crown who adhered to his country in the 
Revolution ; Harrison, of Maryland, Washington's well- 
known secretary; Blair, of Virginia, a judge of its court of 
appeals, and one of Washington's fellow-members in the 
convention ; and in place of Rutledge and Harrison, who 
preferred the highest judicial positions in their own States, 
Thomas Johnson, of Maryland, and James Iredell, of North 
Carolina. 

It will be perceived that the distribution was made with 
tact, and the selections with consummate wisdom. 

The part the appointees had taken in the cause of the 
country, and especially in laying the foundations of the 
political edifice, their eminent qualifications and recognized 
integrity, commended the court to the confidence of the peo- 
ple, and gave assurance that this great department would be 
so administered as to effectuate the purposes for which it 
had been created. 

As to appointments generally, he did not recognize the 
rule of party rewards for party work, although, when party 
opposition became clearly defined, he wrote Pickering that 
to "bring a man into any office of consequence, knowingly, 
whose political tenets are adverse to the measures which the 
General Government is pursuing," would be, in his opinion, 
"a sort of political suicide." To integrity and capacity, as 
qualifications for high civil office, he added that of "marked 
eminence before the country, not only as the more likely 
to be serviceable, but because the public will more readily 
trust them." As in appointments, so in the conduct of 
affairs, prudence, conciliation, and accommodation carried 
the experiment successfully along, while firmness in essen- 
tials was equally present, as when, at a later day, the sup- 
pression of the whisky rebellion and the maintenance of 
B. Mis. 108 2 



1 8 Address of Chief J^iistice Fuller. 

neutrality in the war between France and England gave in- 
formation at home that there existed a central Government 
strong enough to suppress domestic insurrection, and abroad 
that a new and self-reliant power had been born into the 
family of nations. 

The course taken in all matters, whether great or small, 
was the result of careful consideration and the exercise of 
deliberate judgment as to the effect of what was done, or 
forborne to be done, upon the success of the newly con- 
structed fabric. Thus, the regulation, of official behavior 
was deemed a matter of such consequence that Adams, Jay, 
Hamilton, and Madison were consulted upon it; for although, 
republican simplicity had been substituted for monarchy 
and titles, and was held inconsistent with concession of 
superiority by reason of occupancy of official station, yet the 
transition could not be violently made, and the people were, 
in any event, entitled to expect their agents to sustain with 
dignity the high positions to which they had been called. 

During the entire Presidency of Washington, upon the 
details of which it is impracticable here to dwell, time for 
solidification was the dominant thought. The infant giant 
could defend himself even in his cradle ; but to become the 
Colossus of Washington's hopes, the gristle must have op- 
portunity to harden. 

After more than seven years of devotion to the interests 
committed to his charge, and intense watchfulness over the 
adjustment and working of the machinery of the new system, 
having determined upon his own retirement, thereby prac- 
tically assigning a limit to the period during which the 
office could with propriety be occupied by his successors, 
still regarding the problem as not solved, and still anxiously 
desiring to contribute to the last to the welfare of the con- 
stant object of his veneration and love, he gives to his 
countr>-men in the farewell of "an old and affectionate 
friend" the results of his observ^ations and of his reflections 
on the operation of the great scheme he had assisted in 



Address of ChieJ y^iisfke Fuller. 19 

creating and had so far commended to the people b}\his 
administration of its provisions. 

Punctilious as he was in official observ'ances, and dear as 
his home and his own State were to him, this address was 
one that rose above home, and State, and official place; that 
brought him near, not simply to the people to whom it was 
immediately directed, but to that great coming multitude 
whom no man could number, and towards which he felt the 
pathetic attachment of a noble and prophetic soul. And so 
he dates it, not from Mount Vernon nor from his official 
residence, but from the "United States." 

Hamilton, Madison, and Jay had, in the series of essays 
in advocacy of the Constitution, largely aided in bringing 
about its ratification, and displayed wonderful comprehen- 
siveness of view, depth of wisdom, and sagacity of reflection 
in their treatment of the topics involved. Throughout 
Washington's administration they had to the utmost assisted 
in the successful carrying on of the Government, in the 
Cabinet, in Congress, upon the bench, or in diplomatic 
station, and to them as tried and true friends and men of a 
statesmanship as broad as the country, Washington turned 
at one time and another for advice in the preparation of 
these closing words. 

Notwithstanding that innate modesty which had always 
induced a certain real diffidence in assuming station, he was 
conscious of his position as founder of the state ; he felt that 
every utterance in this closing benediction would be cher- 
ished by coming generations as disinterested advice, based 
on experience and knowledge and illuminated by the sin- 
cerest affection, and he invited the careful scrutiny of his 
friends that it might "be handed to the public in an honest, 
unaffected, simple garb. " But the work was his own, as 
all his work was. The virtue went out of him, even when 
he used the hand of another. 

If we turn to this remarkable document and compare the 
line of conduct therein recommended with the course of 



20 Address of Chief yjtsficr Fuller. 

events during the century — the advice given with the results 
of experience — we are amazed at the wonderful sagacity and 
precision with which it lays down the general principles 
through whose application the safety and prosperity of the 
Republic have been secured. To cherish the public credit 
and promote religion, morality, and education were obvious 
recommendations. Economy in public expense, vigorous 
exertion to discharge debt unavoidably occasioned, acqui- 
escence in necessary taxation, and candid construction of 
governmental action in the selection of its proper objects, 
were all parts of the first of these. The increase of net or- 
dinary expenditures from three millions to two hundred and 
sixty-eight millions of dolla^ and of net ordinary receipts 
from four and one-half to three hundred and eighty millions 
of dollars, renders the practice of economy, as contradis- 
tinguished from wastefulness, as commendable to-day as 
then, but it must be a judicious economy ; for, as Washing- 
ton said, timely disbursements frequently prevent much 
larger. 

The extinction of the public debt at one time, and the 
marv^elous reduction within a quarter of a century of its 
creation of a later public debt of more than twenty-five 
hundred millions of dollars, demonstrate practical adherence 
to the rule laid down. It is true that 'the great material 
prosperity which has attended our growth has enabled us to 
meet an enormous burden of taxation with comparative 
ease, but it is nevertheless also true that the general judg- 
ment has never wavered upon the question of the sacred 
observance of plighted faith ; and if at any moment the 
removal of the bars designed to imprison the powerful giant 
of a paper currency seemed to imperil the preservation of 
the public' honor, the sturdy common sense of the people 
has checked through their representatives the dangerous 
tendency before it has gone too far. 

Education was one of the two hooks (the other was local 
self-government) upon which the continuance of republican 
government was considered as absolutely hanging. 



Address of Chief y us (ice Fuller. 21 

The action of the Continental Congress in respect to the 
Western territory was next in importance to that on inde- 
pendence and union. Apart from its political significance 
we recall the familiar fact that one section out of every 
township was reserved under the ordinances of 1785 and 
1787 for the maintenance of schools, because religion, mo- 
rality, and knowledge were considered essential to good gov- 
ernment and the happiness of mankind. The one section 
has been made two, and many millions of acres have been 
granted for the endowment of universities, of normal, sci- 
entific, and mining schools, and institutions for the benefit 
of agriculture and the mechanic arts, including from three 
hundred and fifty to four hundred and fifty thousand acres 
for educational and charitable institutions, to each of the 
new States recently admitted, by an act appropriately passed 
into law on the birthday of Washington. A thousand uni- 
versities, colleges, and institutions of learning, twelve mill- 
ions of children attending two hundred thousand public 
schools, with three hundred and sixty thousand teachers, at 
an expenditure of one hundred and twenty-five millions, and 
with property worth two hundred millions, and sixty-two 
million dollars in private benefactions for education in the 
decade of the last census, testify that the importance of edu- ' 
cation is not underestimated in a country whose institutions 
are dependent upon the intelligence of the people. "^ 

Washington insists that national morality can not prevail 
in exclusion of religious principle, though the influence of 
refined education on minds of a peculiar structure may have 
induced an opposite conclusion. 

History accords with this view. Plutarch said, "You 
may travel over the world and you may find cities without 
walls, without king, without mint, without theater or gym- 
nasium, but you' will never find a city without God, with- 
out prayer, without oracle, without sacrifice;" and the 
eighteen centuries since his day confirm the truth of his 
words. 



22 Address of Chief 'justice Fuller. 

"Take from me," said Bismarck, "my faith in a divine 
order which has destined this German nation for something 
good and great, and you take from me my fatherland." 

Washington declares that "the mere politician, equally 
with the pious man, ought to respect and cherish religion 
and morality as the firmest props of the duties of men and 
citizens. ' ' He did not mean that the value of trust and faith 
has no relation to the reality of the objects of that trust and 
faith, nor that those to whom he referred should indulge in 
religious observances as mere mummeries to deceive, while 
smiling among themselves, as Cicero with his fellow-augurs, 
nor that faith should be betrayed by accommodation to super- 
stition, as in the action of the town clerk of Ephesus, but he 
demanded that they should recognize in fact the indispen- 
sability of these supports of political prosperity. 

And here again the answer of the century's watchman 
tells that the night is passing. 

Crime, drunkenness, pauperism have steadily decreased 
in proportion as population has increased; philanthropic 
agencies have multiplied, moral sensitiveness has become 
keener, and higher standards of personal and official con- 
duct have come to be required, while at the same time the 
statistics of religious progress exhibit wonderful and most 
gratifying results. 

Washington had never permitted his public action to be 
influenced by personal affection or personal hostility, and in 
urging the avoidance of political connections or personal 
alliances with any portion of the foreign world, he character- 
istically condemned indulgence in an inveterate antijDathy 
towards particular nations and a passionate attachment for 
others, while observing good faith and justice towards all. 
No reason existed for becoming implicated in the ordinary 
vicissitudes of the politics of Europe, or the ordinary com- 
binations and collisions of her friendships or enmities. In- 
tervention meant war, not arbitration ; the assumption of 
obligation meant force, not words. No field was to be 



Address of Chief yustice FuUtr. 



23 



opened here for foreign intrigues, and no necessity created 
here for standing armies and the domination of the civil by 
the military authority. 

So scrupulous was Washington's abstinence from the 
slightest appearance of interference that, notwithstanding 
his tender friendship for La Fayette, he would not make 
official application for his release from Olmutz. So absolute 
was his conviction that this country must not become a 
make-weight in Europe's balances of power that he sternly 
held it to neutrality under circumstances which would have 
rendered it impossible for any other man to do so. Such 
has been the policy unchangeably pursued, but it has not 
required the concealment of our sympathy with all who 
have wished to put American institutional ideas into practi- 
cal operation, or our confidence in their ultimate prevalence. 
Nor has the rule prevented the Republic from the declara- 
tion that it should take its own course in case of the inter- 
ference by other nations with the primary interests of 
America. 

In the lapse of years international relations have been 
constantly assuming larger importance with the growth of 
the country and the world and the increasing nearness of 
intercommunication. We are justified in claiming that the 
delicate and difficult function of government involved has 
been from the first discharged in so admirable a manner 
that the solution of the grave questions of the future may 
be awaited without anxiety. 

It is matter of congratulation that the first year of our 
second century witnesses the representatives of the three 
Americas engaged in the effort to increase the facilities of 
commercial intercourse, "consulting the natural course of 
things, diffiising and diversifying by gentle means the 
streams of intercourse, but forcing nothing," success in 
which must knit closer the ties of fraternal friendship, and 
bring the peoples of the two American continents into 
harmonious control of the hemisphere. 



24 Address of Chief yiistice Fuller. 

The course of events has equally shown the profound 
wisdom of the propositions of the Farewell Address bearing 
directly on the form of government delineated in the Federal 
Constitution. 

First of these is the necessity of the preservation of the 
distribution of powers and of resistance to any encroach- 
ment by one department upon another. 

The executive power was vested in the President, but he 
had a voting power in the right to veto, and the power of 
initiation as to treaties, which became binding with the 
advice and consent of the Senate. 

The interposition of the latter was also permitted by the 
requisition of assent in the confirmation of aj^pointments, 
and it could sit in judgment on the President if articles of 
impeachment were presented. In some particulars, there- 
fore, the two departments approached each other m the 
exercise of functions appropriate to each. 

This made it all the more important that there should be 
no invasion of the one by the other. No effort to diminish 
the executive authority or to interfere with the exercise of 
its legitimate discretion has commanded the support of the 
public voice, and impeachment has not been considered a 
proper resort to reconcile differences of judgment, however 
serious. 

The right to initiate and to pass laws having been lodged 
in Congress, the balance of power was actually there reposed, 
and the danger of encroachment would naturally present 
itself from that quarter. 

And here the Federal judiciary was interposed as a co- 
ordinate department, wath power to determine when the lim- 
itations of the fundamental law were transgressed. Without 
an exact precedent, the creation of a tribunal possessed of 
that power was the natural result of the existence of a 
written constitution ; for to leave to the instrumentalities 
by which governmental power is exercised the determina- 
tion of boundaries upon it would dispense with tliem alto- 
gether. 



Address of Chief justice Fuller. 25 

In England the executive and legislative powers are 
practically vested in Parliament and exercised by the Cab- 
inet, which amounts to a committee of the Commons, act- 
ing with the additional power which secret agreement on a 
given course imparts. The constitution is what Parliament 
makes it, and the judicial tribunals only interpret and apply 
the action of that body, being necessarily destitute of t'.ie 
power to hold such action void by reference to any higher 
law than its own enactments. 

Not so with us. Every act of Congress, every act of the 
State legislatures, every part of the constitution of any State, 
if repugnant to the Constitution of the United States, is 
void, and to be so treated. The Supreme Court, bv the de- 
cision of cases in which such acts or provisions are drawn in 
question and in the exercise of judicial functions, renders 
the Constitution in reality as well as in name the supreme 
law of the land. 

Its judgments command the assent of Congress and the 
Executive, the States and the people, alike, and it is this 
unique arbitrament that has challenged the admiration of 
the W' orld. 

The court can not be abolished by Congress, but the num- 
ber of its judges may be increased, or diminished on the 
occurrence of vacancies, and so, while its jurisdiction can 
not be impaired, the exercise of it may be curtailed. 

Nevertheless, no legislation to control it in any way has 
ever been approved by definite public opinion, and the tri- 
bunal remains in the complete discharge of the vital and 
important functions it was created to perform. 

Scrupulously abstaining from the decision of strictly po- 
litical questions and from the performance of other than 
judicial duties ; never grasping an ungranted jurisdiction 
and never shrinking from the exercise of that conferred upon 
it, it commands the reverence of a law-abiding people. 

Again, Washington urges not only that his countrymen 
shall steadily discountenance irregular opposition to the ac- 



26 Address of ChUf justice Fullet. 

knowledged authority" of the Government, and resist with 
care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, but shall 
oppose any change in the system except by amendment in 
the mode pro\-ided, particularly warning them, as fearful of 
objection to the pressure of the Government, that the energy 
of the scheme must not be impaired, as \-igor is not only 
required to manage the common' interests throughout so ex- 
tensive a country-, but is necessary- to protect liberty- itself. 

In no part of the Constitution was greater sagacity- dis- 
plaved than in the pro\nsion for its amendment. Xo State, 
without its consent, could be deprived of its equal suSrage 
in the Senate, but otherwise (with an exception now imma- 
terial) the instrument might be amended upon the concur- 
rence of two-thirds of both houses and the ratification of 
the legislatures or conventions of three-fourths of the several 
States, or through a Federal convention, when applied for 
by the legislatures of two-thirds of the States, and upon like 
ratification. 

It was designed that the ultimate sovereignty- thus reposed 
should not be called into play, except through this slow and 
deliberate process, which would give time for mere hypoth- 
esis and opinion to exhaust themselves, and the conclusion 
reached to be the result of gra\-it\- of thought and judgment, 
and of the concurrence of substantially ever>- part of the 
country-. 

The first ten amendments hardly come within the appli- 
cation of the principle, as they were in substance requested 
by many of the States at the time of ratification. In the 
Pennsylvania convention, James Wilson declared that the 
subject of a bill of rights was not mentioned in the consti- 
tutional convention until within three days of its adjourn- 
ment, and even then no direct motion upon the subject was 
offered, and that such a bill was entirely unnecessary- in a 
government having none but enumerated powers ; but Jef- 
ferson urged from Paris that a bill of rights was ' ' what the 
people are entitled to against ever\- government on earth, 



Address of Ciiuj j-ustice FulUr. 27 

general or particular," and that one ought to be added, 
' ' providing clearly and without the aid of sophism, for free- 
dom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against 
standing armies, restriction of monopolies, the eternal and 
unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by 
jur}' in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land, 
and not by the laws of nations. ' ' This \-iew prevailed, but 
in order that the affirmance of certain risrhts misrht not dis- 
parage others or lead to implications in favor of the posses- 
sion of other powers, it was added that the enumeration of 
certain rights should not be construed to deny or disparage 
others retained by the people, and that the powers not dele- 
gated were reser\-ed. 

Congress, in the preamble to these amendments, and 
Washington, in his inaugural, commend their adoption out 
of regard for the public harmony and a reference for the 
characteristic rights of freemen. 

The eleventh inhibited the extension by construction, in 
the particular named, of the Federal judicial power, and the 
twelfth related to matters of detail in the election of Presi- 
dent and \'ice-President. Xo one of the twelve was in re- 
straint of State action. 

Sixt]^- years elapsed before the ratification of the thirteenth, 
fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments. These definitely dis- 
posed of the subject of slavery-, that Serbonian bog 'tw^ixt 
the extreme \'iews of the two schools of political thought 
di\-iding the country- — x-iews which, except for the existence 
of that institution, might never have been pushed to an ex- 
treme, but might have continued peacefully to operate in 
the production of a golden mean between the absorption of 
power by the central and its diffusion among the local gov- 
ernments. And by the foirrteenth an additional guaranty- 
was furnished against the arbitrary- exercise by the States 
of the powers of government, unrestrained by the estab- 
lished principles of private rights and distributive justice. 

Undoubtedlv the effect of these later amendments was 



28 Address of Chief yustice Fuller. 

to increase the power of Congress, but there was no re\'olu- 
tionary change. It is as true of the existing government 
as it was of the proposed government, that it must stand or 
fall with the State governments. 

Added provisions for the protection of personal rights in- 
volved to that extent additional powers, but the essential 
elements of the structure remained unchanged. 

In other words, while certain obstructions to its working 
have been removed, the clock-work has not been thrown 
out of gear, but the pendulum continues to swing through 
its appointed arc and the vast machinery to move noiselessly 
and easily to and fro, marking the orderly progress of a great 
people in the achievement of happiness by the exercise of 
self-government. 

But while direct alterations have been few, the funda- 
mental law has been developed in the evolution «of national 
growth, as Washington, indeed, anticipated. " Time and 
habit," said he, "are at least as necessary to fix the true 
character of government as of other human institutions ;" 
and "experience is the surest standard by which to fix the 
real tendency of the existing constitution of a countrv." 

In this he applies the language of Hume, and speaks in 
the spirit of the observation of Bacon, that ' ' rightly is truth 
called the daughter of time, not of authority." 

Time, habit, experience, legislation, usage may have as- 
sisted in expanding the Constitution in the quiet, imper- 
ceptible manner in which nature adapts itself to new con- 
ditions, though remaining still the same. 

Yet its chief growth is to be found in the interpretation 
of its provisions by the tribunal upon which that delicate 
and responsible duty was imposed. And in that view what 
"a debt immense of endless gratitude" is owed to those 
luminous decisions of John Marshall, which placed the 
principles of the Constitution upon an impregnable basis 
and rendered an experimental system permanent. 

Renowned and venerable name ! It was he who liberated 



Adcfress of Chief "yusticc Fuller. 29 

the spirit which lived within the Constitution — the mind 
infused "through every member of the mighty mass" — so 
that it might "pervade, sustain, and actuate the whole." 

The fact that the conclusions reached by the court and 
set forth by the persu isive and logical reasoning of the great 
Chief-Justice did not at the moment move in the direction 
of public opinion, but finally met with the entire approval 
of the matured judgment of the people, furnishes an im- 
pressive illustration of the working of our system of govern- 
ment. 

Doubtless, in many instances, the Constitution has been 
subjected to strains which have tested its elasticity without 
breaking the texture, but the watchfulness of party has aided 
to keep the balance true, absolute infraction has been dep- 
recated or denied, and a law-loving and law-abiding people 
has welcomed the rebound which restored the rigid outline 
and even tenor of its way. 

The departing statesman dwells with insistence, on the 
grounds both of interest and sensibility, upon the paramount 
importance of the Union and of that unity of government 
which makes of those who live under it one ]3eople and one 
nation, and will, he hopes, induce all its citizens, whether 
by birth or choice, to glory in the name ' ' American. ' ' 

Here, the ideal which influenced his conduct may be read 
between the lines — the ideal of a powerful and harmonious 
people, possessed of freedom because capable of self-restraint, 
and working out the destinies of an ocean-bound republic, 
whose example should be a message of glad tidings to all 
the earth. 

And the realization of that ideal involved a patriotism not 
based upon the dictates of interest, but springing from de- 
votion of the heart, and pride in the object of that devotion. 

What Washington desired, as Lodge's fine biography 
makes entirely clear, was, that the people should become 
saturated with the principles of national unity and love of 
countr}^, should possess an "American character," should 



30 Address of Chief 'y list ice Fuller. 

never forget that they were "Americans." Hence he op- 
posed education abroad, lest our youth might contract princi- 
ples unfriendly to republican government; and discouraged 
immigration except of those who, by "an intermixture with 
our people," could themselves, or their descendants, "get 
assimilated to our customs, measures, and laws; in a word, 
soon become one people." 

To be an American was to be part and parcel of American 
ideas, institutions, prosperity, and progress. It was to be 
like-minded with the patriotic leaders who have served the 
cause of their native or adopted land, from Washington to 
Lincoln. It was to be convinced of the virtues of republi- 
can government as the bulwark of the true and genuine 
liberties of mankind, which would ultimately transmute 
suffering through ignorance into happiness through light. 

Who would not glory in the name American, when it 
carries with it such illustrative types as Washington, and 
Franklin, and Samuel iVdams, and Jefferson, and such a 
tvpe as Lincoln, whose very faults were American, as were 
the virtues of his sad and heroic soul? 

As the lust for domination is in perpetual conflict with 
the longing to be free, so the tendency to concentration 
struggles perpetually with the tendency to diffuse. 

It is in the maintenance of the equilibrium that the 
largest liberty consistent with the greatest progress has been 
found. And this is as true between the States and the Fed- 
eral Government as between the individual and the State. 

But while the play of the two forces is a natural one, the 
gravitation is to the center, with human nature as it is. 

The passage of the century, with the vast material devel- 
opment of the country, has brought this strikingly home to 
us in the increased importance of the Federal Government 
in prestige and power, as compared with that of the State 
governments in the time of Washington. Position on the 
Supreme Bench or Cabinet place might still be declined for 
personal reasons, but not because of preference for the head' 



Address of Chief y^ustice Fuller. 31 

ship of a State government, or of a State tribunal, and no 
punctilio would cause the governor of to-day to hesitate 
upon a question of official etiquette when the President 
visits a State capital. 

Rapidity and ease of communication by railroad, tele- 
graph, and post ; the handling of the vast income and ex- 
penditure of the Federal Treasury, and the knitting together 
of the innumerable ties of family, social, and business rela- 
tions have created a solidarity which demands, in the 
regulation of commerce, the management of financial affairs, 
and the like, the interposition of Federal authority. The 
national banking system, the Interstate Commerce Com- 
mission, the Agricultural Department, the Labor and Edu- 
cational Bureaus, the National Board of Health, indicate the 
drift toward the exertion of the national will, a natural and 
perhaps inevitable result of that unity which formed the 
object of Washington's desire. 

But what he wished was solidarity without centralization 
in destruction of local regulation, for it must not be assumed 
that he did not realize the vital importance of the preserva- 
tion of local self-government through the States. To realize 
its great destiny the country must oppose externally a con- 
solidated front and contain within itself a single people 
only ; but popular government must be preserved, and the 
doubt was whether a common government of the popular 
form could embrace so large a sphere. 

Hence the earnestness with which Washington invoked 
the spirit of essential unity through pride and affection to 
move upon the face of the waters. When the new political 
world had fairly taken form and substance other considera- 
tions would resume their due importance. He was pro- 
foundly disturbed by the apprehension that different por- 
tions of the population might become, through contradictory 
interests, in effect rival peoples, and the Union be destroyed 
by the contention for mastery between thetn. His sagacious 
mind perceived the danger arising from the social and eco- 



32 Address of Chief J^ustice Fuller, 

nomic condition produced by an institution with which the 
framers of the Constitution had found themselves unable to 
deal, and he deprecated an appeal to the last reason of kings 
in preservation of one government over our whole domain. 

Yet that appeal was fortunately so long delayed that when 
it came the civil war determined the perpetuity and indis- 
solubilit)- of the Union, without the loss of distinct and 
individual existence or of the right of self-government by 
the States. 

This conflict demonstrated that no part of the countr}' 
was destitute of that old fighting spirit, which rouses at the 
invocation of force through arms, and which long years of 
prosperity could not weaken or destroy, and, at the same 
time, that gigantic armies drawn from the ranks of a citizen 
soldiery, however skilled they may become in the arts of 
war, on the cessation of hostilities at once resume the nor- 
mal cultivation of the arts of peace. 

And from an apparent invasion of the carefully con- 
structed scheme to secure popular government, popular gov- 
ernment has obtained a wider scope and renewed power, 
and from an apparent industrial overthrow has come an 
unexampled industrial development. "Out of the eater 
came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweet- 
ness. ' ' 

The waste of war is always rapidly replaced, and in its 
effect on institutions time may repair its injuries without 
weakening its benefits. 

Is it possible to conceive of a more searching test of the 
wisdom and lasting quality of our form of government than 
that applied by the civil war? Is it possible to conceive of 
a more convincing demonstration than the reconciliation 
which has followed the conclusion of the struggle, and the 
complete re-instatement of the system in harmonious opera- 
tion over the entire national domain? No conquered prov- 
inces perpetuated personal animosities, and by the fact of 
their existence, through despotic rule over part, changed 



Address of Chief yiistice Fuller. 33 

the government over all. On the contrary, the States, vital 
parts of the system, and in whose annihilation the system 
perishes, resumed the relations temporarily suspended, and 
the continuance of local self-government on its accustomed 
course prevented the old connection from carrying with it 
the bitterness of enforced change. It was the triumph of 
the machinery that its practical working so speedily assumed 
its normal movement, substantially uninjured by the con- 
vulsion that had shaken it. 

And as the wheels within the wheels revolve, the aspira- 
tion finds a response in every heart: "Come from the four 
winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain that they 
may live" — live with their reunited brethren, one in the 
hand of God. 

Finally, the country is warned against the baleful effects 
of the spirit of party as the worst enemy of governments of 
the popular form. 

Franklin wrote that all great affairs are carried on by par- 
ties, but that as soon as a party has gained its general point 
each member becomes intent upon his particular interest ; 
that few in public affairs act from a mere view of the good 
of their country, and fewer still with a view to the good of 
mankind. But these observations would, in the light of 
the history of our country, be regarded as too sweeping, 
although they suggest grounds for the objection of Wash- 
ington to the domination of party spirit. 

Parties based on different opinions as to the principles on 
which the Government is to be conducted must necessarily 
exist. To them we look for that activity in the advocacy 
of opposing views ; that watchfulness over the assertion of 
authority ; that keen debate as to the course most conducive 
to well-being, essential to the successful growth of popular 
institutions. That voice of the people which, when duly 
given and properly ascertained, directs the action of the 
state is largely brought to declare itself through the instru- 
H. Mis. 168 3 



34 Adiinss of Chief Justice Fuller. 

mentality of party. It is this which corrects that general 
apathy rightly regarded by De Tocqueville as a serious 
menace to popular government because conducive to its 
complete surrender to the domination of its agents if they 
will but relieve responsibility and gratify desire. But if the 
spirit of party is so extreme that party itself becomes a des- 
potism, or, if government itself becomes nothing but organ- 
ized party, then the danger apprehended by Washington is 
upon us. 

With the increase of population and wealth and power; 
with the spoils of office dependent upon the elections; with 
vast interests affected by legislation, as in the care and disposi- 
tion of public property, the raising of public revenue, the 
grant or regulation of corporate powers and monopolistic 
combinations, the danger is that corruption, always insid- 
ious, always aggressive, and always dangerous to popular 
government, will control party machinery to effect its ends, 
tempt public men into accepting favors at its hands by tak- 
ing office purchased by its influence, and flourish in rank 
luxuriance under the shelter of a system which confounds 
the honest and the patriotic with the cunning and the prof- 
ligate. An intelligent public opinion ceases to exist when 
it can not assert itself, and great measures and great princi- 
ples are lost when elections degenerate into the mere regis- 
tration of the decrees of selfishness and greed. 

Whenever party spirit becomes so intense as to compass 
such results it will have reached the height denounced by 
Washington, and will realize in the action it dictates the 
terrible definition of despotic government : "When the sav- 
ages wish to eat fruit they cut down a tree and pluck the 
fruit." 

However difficult it may be to fully appreciate the influ- 
ence of great men upon the cause of civilization, it is im- 
possible to overestimate that of Washington, thus exerted 
through precept as well as by example In the general 
recognition of to-day of the effect of that which he did, that 



Address of CJiief y'listicc Fuller. 35 

which he said, that which he was, upon the public con- 
science, is found the justification of the confident claim that 
popular government under the form prescribed by the funda- 
mental law has ceased to be an experiment. Neither for- 
eign wars, nor attacks upon either of the co-ordinate depart- 
ments, nor the irritation of a disputed national election, nor 
territorial aggrandizement, nor the addition of realm after 
realm to the empire of States, nor sectional controversies, 
nor the destruction of a great economical, social, and polit- 
ical institution, nor the shock of arms in internecine con- 
flict, have impaired the structure of the Government or 
subverted the orderly rule of the people. 

But the deliverance vouchsafed in time of tribulation is 
as earnestly to be sought in time of prosperity, when mate- 
rial acquisition may deaden the spiritual sense and impede 
the progress of human elevation. 

In the growth of population; in the expansion of com- 
merce, manufactures, andthe useful arts; in progress in scien- 
tific discovery and invention; in the accumulation of wealth; 
in material advancement of every kind, the century has 
indeed been marvelous. Steam, electricity, gas, teleg- 
raphy, photography, have multiplied the instrumentalities 
for the exercise of human power. Science, philosophy, 
literature, and art have moved forward along the lines of 
prior achievement. But wants have multiplied as civiliza- 
tion has advanced, and with multiplied wants and the in- 
creased freedom of the individual have come the antagonisms 
inevitably incident to inequality of condition, even though 
there is widely extended itnprovement upon the whole, and 
often because of it, and added to them the more serious dis- 
contents arising from the existence, notwithstanding the 
immense results of stimulated production, of privation and 
distress. 

The Declaration asserted political equality and the posses- 
sion of the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit 
of happiness, and the future of the individual was assumed 



36 Address of Chief y'ustice Fuller. 

to be secured in securing through government that equality 
and those rights. 

In spite of the violent overthrow of institutions in the 
French revolution, that great convulsion carried within it 
the same salutary principles, while a quickening outburst of 
spiritual energy marked the commencement of the indus- 
trial development of England, and all Europe glowed with 
the fires of sympathy with the wretched and oppressed. 

Throughout the hundred years thus introduced aspiration 
for the elevation of humanity has not diminished in inten- 
sitv, and hope of the general attainment of a more exalted 
plane has gained new strength in the effort to remove or 
mitigate the ills which have oppressed mankind. The en- 
hanced valuation of human life, the abolition of slavery, 
the increase of benevolent and charitable institutions, the 
large public appropriations and private benefactions to the 
cause of education, the wnde diffusion of intelligence, per- 
ceptible growth in religion, morality, and fraternal kindness 
encourage the effort and give solid ground for the hope. 
And since the protection and regulation of the rights of 
individuals, as between themselves and as between them and 
the community, ultimately come to express the will of the 
latter, it is not unreasonable to contend that the perfecti- 
bility of man is bound up in the preservation of republican 
institutions. 

Where the pressure upon the masses has been intense, the 
drift has been towards increased interference by the State in 
the attempt to alleviate inequality of condition. So long 
as that interference is enabling and protective only to en- 
able, and individual effort is not so circumscribed as to 
destroy the self-reliance of the people, they move onward 
with accelerated speed in intelhictual and moral as well as 
material progress; but when man allows his beliefs, his fam- 
ily, his property, his labor, each of his acts, to be subjected 
to the omnipotence of the State, or is unmindful of the fact 
that it is the duty of the people to support the government 



Address of Chief Justice Fuller. 37 

and not of the government to support the people, such a 
surrender of independence involves the cessation of such 
progress in its largest sense. 

The statement that popular outbreaks were often as bene- 
ficial in the political world as storms in the physical was 
defended upon the ground that, although evils, they were 
productive of good by preventing the degeneracy of govern- 
ment and nourishing that general attention to public affairs, 
the absence of which would be tantamount to the abdication 
of self-government. 

But while the rights to life, to use one's faculties in all 
lawful ways, and to acquire and enjoy property are morally 
fundamental rights antecedent to constitutions, which do 
not create, but secure and protect them, yet it is within the 
power of the State to promote the health, peace, morals, 
education, and good order of the people by legislation to that 
end, and to regulate the use of property in which the public 
has such an interest as to be entitled to assert control. In 
this wide field of regulation by law, and in the reformation 
of laws which are found to promote inequality, as well as in 
the patient efforts of mutual forbearance which the educa- 
tion of conflict produces, the direction of the rule of the 
people is steadily towards an amelioration not to be found 
in the dead level of despotism nor in the destruction of 
society proposed by the anarchist. 

It is but little more than thirty years since the well-known 
prophecy was uttered, that with the increase of population 
and the taking up of the public lands, our institutions then 
being really put to the test, either some Caesar or Napoleon 
would seize the reins of government, or our Republic would 
be plundered and laid waste as the Roman Empire had been, 
but by Huns and Vandals engendered within our own coun- 
try and by our own institutions. 

The brilliant essayist did not comprehend the character 
of our fundamental law, the securities carefully devised to 
prevent facility in changing it, and the provisions which 



38 Address of Chief 'justice Fit Her. 

inhibit the subversion of individual freedom, the impairment 
of the obligation of contracts, and the confiscation of prop- 
erty, nor realize the practical operation of a governmental 
scheme intended to secure that sober second thought which 
alone constitutes public opinion in this country, and which 
makes of government by the people a government strong 
enough, in the language of the address, to "withstand the 
enterprises of faction, to confine each member of the society 
within the limits prescribed by the laws, and to maintain 
all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of 
person and property," without which "liberty is little else 
than a name." 

Undoubtedly to this people, who from four have become 
seventy millions in the passage of their first century, to reach 
by the close of the second, perhaps, seven hundred millions, 
with resources which can feed and clothe and render happy 
more than twice that number, the solution of grave problems 
is committed. 

How shall the evils of municipal government, the poverty, 
the vice, engendered by the disproportionate growth of 
urban populations, be dealt with as that growth continues? 
How shall immigration be regulated so that precious insti- 
tutions may not be threatened by too large an influx of those 
lacking in assimilative power and inclination? How shall 
the full measure of duty towards that other race, to which 
in God's providence this country has been so long a home, 
be discharged so that participation in common blessings and 
in the exercise of common rights may lead to and rest upon 
equal education and intelligence? How shall monopoly be 
checked, and the pressure of accumulation yield to that 
equitable distribution, which shall "undo excess, and each 
man have enough?" How shall the individual be held to 
the recognition of his responsibility for government, and to 
meet the demand of public obligations? How shall corrup- 
tion in private and public life be eradicated? 

These and like questions must be answered, and they will 



Address of Chief justice Fuller. 39 

be by the nation of Washington, which in the exercise of 
the sagacity and prudence and self-control born of free in- 
stitutions, and the cultivation of the humanities of Christian 
civilization will hallow the name American by making it 
the synonym of the highest sense of duty, the highest mo- 
rality, the highest patriotism, and so become more power- 
ful and more noble than the powerful and noble Roman 
nation, which stood for centuries the embodiment of law 
and order and government, but fell when the gods of the 
fireside fled from hearthstones whose sanctity had been in- 
vaded, and its citizens lost the sense of duty in indulgence 
in pleasure. 

And so the new century may be entered upon in the spirit 
of optimism, the natural result, perhaps, of a self-confidence 
which has lost nothing in substance by experience, though 
it has gained in the moderation of its impetuosity; yet an 
optimism essential to the accomplishment of great ends, not 
blind to perils, but bold in the fearlessness of a faith whose 
very consciousness of the limitations of the present asserts 
the attainability of the untraveled world of a still grander 
future. 

No ship can sail forever over su-mmer seas. The storms 
that it has weathered* test and demonstrate its ability to sur- 
vive the storms to come, but storms there must be until 
there shall be no more sea. 

But as amid the tempests in which our ship of state was 
launched, and in the times succeeding, so in the times to 
come, with every exigency constellations of illustrious men 
will rise upon the angry skies, to control the whirlwind and 
dispel the clouds by their potent influences, while from the 
' ' clear upper sky ' ' the steady light of the great planet marks 
out the course the vessel must pursue, and sits shining on the 
sails as it comes grandly into the haven where it would be. 



